If this consistently has happened at every place you've worked in your career, I think you're luckier than you realize. Independent of the implementation, it's also still interesting as a sign of what might be supported for users down the line; I don't agree that this is how they'd write the code if they never expected to allow another provider, and other comments in the thread have already provided some insight into what the context might be (e.g. EU market).
Apple had enough experience relying on and being screwed by third parties that they have a built-in allergy to it. They do not like being boxed in and always want to be in control of their destiny.
This would’ve been useful during their bake off where they were trying to choose if they wanted to go with Google, Anthropic, or OpenAI. But even without that, they would absolutely not want to be in a situation where they had to redo everything to get off a bad partner.
They are currently getting rid of Qualcomm modems the new fold iPhone is using an Apple in house modem (C2) and due to market conditions Apple will probably have to do something with memory because of the three head cartel and the Chinese.
Apple has a long and contentious relationship with Qualcomm, and Qualcomm is big enough and important enough Apple couldn’t bully them into doing what they want.
I think it makes a lot of sense for Apple to control their own destiny there. It’s let them focus on the things they care about like power efficiency and tighter integration.
DRAM is a complete commodity. I don’t think making their own makes any sense. They don’t make their own screws. Although the reaction from iFixit would be hilarious. If Apple makes their own DRAM I don’t see how it would be any different from what SK Hynix sells.
The useful thing would be fabbing it since that’s the bottleneck. But that commits them to the insanity of running their own fabs and keeping them up-to-date and on the bleeding edge forever.
And even if they want to do that, they’d have to buy all the experienced people, the ASML machines that I assume are spoken for for the next few years, etc.
